Stevie Smith

Poet

1902-09-20

Quotes by Stevie Smith

• Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeplyMust take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.'Thus spake the awful aging coupleWhose heart the years had turned to rubble.But the little children, to save any brother,Let it in at one ear and out at the other.

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• The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.

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• I'll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I'll have your heart, your life.

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• But human beings must suffer, and must make suffering for themselves, and beat themselves up into spiritual frenzies, and oh death and desolation, and oh night space and horror, and oh keep my dream from me. And how very splendid it is that we can do all this to ourselves and have such a splendid and really ingenious gift for inflicting suffering upon ourselves. For suffering and strain are the gauge of life, and who wishes to live like a vegetable?But sometimes suffering measures life and ends it. And then it is not good at all. And between two people without knowing it a love may grow up, and a link may form, and no one knows or guesses.

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• Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,Sharp Roman road to Paradise,Come eat me up, I'll pay thy tollWith all my flesh, and keep my soul.

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• My friendships, they are a very strong part of my life, they are as light as gossamer but also they are as strong as steel. And I cannot throw them off, nor altogether do with them or without them. And I love them at the point where they say: It is nice to see you again. And I love them too at the point when they say: Good-bye, come again soon. The rhythm of friendship is a very good rhythm.

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• Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know,I do not fear the night aboveAs I fear the friends below.

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• Wild creatures' eyes, the colonel said,Are innocent and fathomlessAnd when I look at them I seeThat they are not aware of meAnd oh I find and oh I blessA comfort in this emptinessThey only see me when they wantTo pounce upon me at the hunt;But in the tame varietyThere couches an anxietyAs if they yearned, yet knew not whatThey yearned for, nor they yearned for not.And so my dog would look at meAnd it was pitiful to seeSuch love and such dependency.The human heart is not at easeWith animals that look like these.

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• My heart was full of softening showers,I used to swing like this for hours,I did not care for war or death,I was glad to draw my breath.

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• Marriage I thinkFor womenIs the best of opiates.It kills the thoughtsThat think about the thoughts,It is the best of opiates.So said Maria.But too long in solitude she'd dwelt,And too long her thoughts had feltTheir strength. So when the man drew near,Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.Poor Maria! Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,For now she's alone again and all in pain;She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stayTo trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day.

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• My Muse sits forlornShe wishes she had not been bornShe sits in the coldNo word she says is ever told.

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• Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.

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• But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever....

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• Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.

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• If I lie down on my bed I must be here,But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.

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• Raise from your bed of languorRaise from your bed of dismayYour friends will not come tomorrowAs they did not come todayYou must rely on yourself, they said,You must rely on yourself,Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor manAs he took it from the shelfCrying, O sweet Death come to meCome to me for company,Sweet Death it is only you I canConstrain for company.

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• There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

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• Hope and desire,All unfulfilled,Have more than ropeAnd hangman killed.

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• It is the privilege of the richTo waste the time of the poorTo water with tears in secretA tree that grows in secretThat bears fruit in secretThat ripened falls to the ground in secretAnd manures the parent treeOh the wicked tree of hatred and the secretThe sap rising and the tears falling.

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• Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood.

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